Being decided today by the Supreme Court is whether or not to grant a writ of certiorari to Curry v. Hensinger. The case has to do with a fifth grader distributing candy canes with a (very incorrect) description of their origins for a classroom-wide introduction to economics dubbed “Classroom City.” As it goes, the teacher denied Mr. Joel Curry the right to distribute his candy canes and attached story. The Curry’s were pissed, but Joel’s partner for Classroom City, Siddarth Reddy, summed it up nicely, saying, “Nobody wants to hear about Jesus” upon seeing Joel’s item to distribute. (Siddarth was assigned to decorate the storefront.)
The Sixth Circuit affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the public school’s principal did not infringe on Joel’s First Amendment rights by not permitting him to distribute the item. The rationale was that since the speech was unsolicited (as opposed to an assignment where viewpoints were asked for, e.g., an essay on an object important to the student) and would be exposed to very young children (the products were made available throughout the entire elementary school), it could be offensive to some students or parents.
It will be interesting to see if the court decides to take this issue on. Since Justices serve for life (technically, “during good Behaviour”), the Court isn’t subject to senioritis at the end of a President’s term. There are a lot of interesting facts the Sixth Circuit’s decision relies on that could be picked apart by a higher court: the age of the ones exposed to the speech (Would this be legal in a high school? Middle school?), the definition of solicitation, what “offensive” speech is, etc.
Interestingly, this candy cane bullshit has been pulled before. Walz ex. rel. Walz describes how one mother used her child to push not only candy canes with the same dumbass story attached, but also pencils bearing the phrase “Jesus ♥s The Little Children.”
[via SCOTUSblog’s Petitions to Watch]
N.B.: The Third Circuit fails at using the heart symbol, instead opting for “‘Jesus [Loves] The Little Children’ (heart symbol).” Get with the times—Unicode is here to stay!
Update: Doesn’t look like it happened.
